With its excellent academic and music programs, Oberlin College in Ohio seemed like a perfect fit for Nina Huang, a California high school student who plays flute and piano and hopes to eventually study medicine or law.
But Huang, 16, said she crossed the college off her application list after Ohio enacted a near-total ban on abortion last month. She now plans to cast a wider net for schools in states with less restrictive laws.
“I don’t want to go to school in a state where there is an abortion ban,” she said.
The US Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalised abortion nationwide has some students rethinking their higher education plans as states rush to ban or curtail abortion, according to interviews with 20 students and college advisers across the country.
While it has long been the case that some students hesitated to attend schools in places with different political leanings than their own, recent moves by conservative states on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights have deepened the country’s polarisation.
For some students, the restrictions raise fears that they won’t be able to get an abortion if they need one or that they will face discrimination for gender differences. Others said they worried about facing racial prejudice or being politically ostracised.
“I’m only in high school right now, and I’m still finding out who I am,” said Samira Murad, 17, who will be a senior this fall at Stuyvesant High School in New York. “I don’t want to move somewhere I can’t be myself because of laws put in place.”
It is too soon to determine whether such concerns will affect admissions in a measurable way, and evidence from other recent divisive state laws suggests there may be little overall impact.
But in the wake of Roe’s overturn, college counselors said abortion has figured prominently in many conversations with clients, with some going as far as nixing their dream schools.
“Some of our students have explicitly stated that they will not apply to colleges and universities in states which may infringe on their access to reproductive rights,” said Daniel Santos, chief executive of the Florida college counseling company Prepory.
